In fact, is absolute nothingness under logical acceptance?
How does it depend on reference frame we are talking about?
One way to define nothingness is to define it in a negative way: You first define what "thing" is then negate it. In our current understanding, "thing" is either a material object or a lump of radiation [The two mix and eventually become a new 'thing']. Now, according to quantum theory, if you remove all material objects from space, vacuum is left. But vacuum is different from nothingness as it teems with zero point energy of every conceivable radiation wavelength and it allows creation of pairs of particles [electron + positron, etc.] when stimulated. Basically, in the material sense, nothingness does not exist.
AVOID THE VOID!
If Nothing is, then there is Nothing!
Nothing needs no introduction and was never introduced.
Nothing needs no explanation and doesn’t even have the decency to explain itself.
NOTHING CANNOT BE!
There is not a ripple on the deep blue sea?
Nothing bothers me!
Satre found his own flesh and the thought that thought itself was intimately entwined with the contingencies of its’ squishy avenues and alleyways a source of existential Nausea. I, on the other hand, find my stomach churning upon the bottomless precipice – of nothing!
Did a universe come crashing into being with all its vasty deeps and screaming Catherine wheels of fire whilst Nothing slept in the other room?
Could all this mayhem have come and simpered into silence if there was no consciousness to mark it and say that it was so?
........................................................................
Was the Universe born of Nothing? Perhaps not. Perhaps the opposite of the universe is not ‘nothing’ – but another state of ‘something’. Perhaps the‘Big Bang’ was an event that marked a transition from a state of continuity and ‘unity’ (a ‘oneness’) to a state of discontinuity and plurality!
The ‘Fractal Catalytic Model’ (FCM) of living systems resolves the traditional mind/matter problem by deconstructing the material. Within the context of the FCM the observable universe is understood to be the structured evolution of discontinuities (events that collapse the wave function). The only things deemed to have true ontological status are the quantities associated with the un-collapsed wave function. The un-collapsed wave function is also deemed to be ‘identical’ to a conscious state.
Where this leads to is a form of idealism – the only thing that may be truly claimed to exist within the FCM is consciousness. Non living objects and phenomena are deemed only to be ontologically ‘implicit’ in the pattern of unfolding discontinuities. Indeed, the spacio/temporal structure of the universe itself is understood to be only ‘implicit’ in the pattern of unfolding discontinuities – there is no stuff that might rightly be called ‘space’ or ‘time’ at the macroscopic level.
If the above assertion is correct then there can be no conventional ‘nothing’ or ‘void’ because the supposed material world of existence, within the context of which these concepts derive their meaning, itself does not exist – it is only implicit!
The only true ‘nothing’ then, is the nothing of death – the absence of consciousness.
But, even then........
I am not sure....
Can nothing come from something?
………………………………………………
What careless promise
cast the honest emptiness - with stars?
What cruel caress
distressed the perfect silence of the sea?
and stirred in shadows dreams that rose....
A ripple answered to a breeze... -
A kiss it was
that missed from heaven's heart - a beat
and started life's green ravishing.
Is a thought nothing? A memory? Can we create out of nothing so long as the creation's sum is still nothing? Say, for example, the missing anti-matter exists in the Tachyon Universe, that is, on the other side of C (speed of light). Balanced universes whose combination, in physical terms, is nothing.
How to define nothingness, am stumbling while understanding simply the meaning of it.
The question: ''What is nothing?' is paradoxal. You can ask : ''What is'' only about thing that exist but here you ask ''What IS'' of non existence. All we can know is relations among existing things. We do not know what existence is nor its negation.
My thinking seems a bit limited. I'm disappointed to see that empty set doesn't fit. It is, in a sense, very similar to the number zero - very useful Indian invention and relatively easily accepted, even by very young children. "Lack of anything" sounds better?
Marek,
The empty set is a nothing within a pre-existing set theory framework. The question is about a absolute nothing which denies any pre-existing framework for its definition. It is why it is impossible to define this type of absolute nothing.
Difficult to find VOID or ABSOLUTE nothing ! Everything IS ! Positive thought, positive energy, there is NO NOTHING !
It seems intuitive in that one cannot describe good without inferring bad. How could one describe something without implying nothing . Something otherwise would have no meaning. How could you have good without bad to compare to and similarly how could you have something without nothing?
I think, Marek was close enough - an empty set surely is something, but the content of an empty set is nothing ;)
But don't mix it up with the number "0", because this is the number of elements in the empty set - so to speak the cardinality of nothing.
The idea of void and nothing is local. In the context of something already exists the void or nothingness is the sum of the opposites. another way of thinking is that if there was void or nothing, what we are experiencing here are fluctuations of that. In this sense our reality is just a perturbation of void.
I'm amazed how hard it is to accept an idea of "nothing". Don't get me wrong, but we all have, non-scientists included, "nothing" in our heads, some personal impression of void. We have no difficulties with empty set, number zero, and more sophisticated things like energy, time, or phonons - but "nothing" seems different. Why? It is a clear and obvious opposition to "something", thus it is logical (following Robert). It is immaterial - so what? That's the way it should be. The truth, beauty, or angriness - are in the same class and we accept them without hesitation, they all exist in our minds. Seems that poets are much smarter than scientists in respect to this idea.
Nothing is impossible, the word itself says 'I'm possible'!
-Audrey Hepburn
Nothingness is the quality or condition or the state of being nothing. According to Leibniz only things that exist need explanation. It is only because they exist that we are driven to ask questions like why they exist and why they exist in this particular way and not in any other way. Nothing ( or nothingness), however, does not exist and even if it did we know nothing about it and so isn't in need of an explanation.
I believe nothingness is a highly unstable state. The moment it appears (exist) it become something and so disappear.
@Marek, I think one obstacle to accept nothingness is that most humans in their curiosity don't mind hunting down whatever they are after. And nothingness is 'something' that we cannot hunt. So, most of us, are prepared to find something 'behind'. We want to know, but we don't want to be advised that there is nothing.
@Issam, it seems - if I follow your account on the unstable state of nothingness - that nothingness is quite similar to 'now', which is a state (would 'present moment' be the correct word?) that 'always' changes unless one can freeze time.
Multiply the unknown quidditas x 0, to maybe unveil its "one-ness"
Peirce said:
"We begin, then, with nothing, pure zero. But this is not the zero of denial. The nothing of negation is the nothing of death, which comes as second to, or after something. But this pure zero is the nothing that is not born. There is no single thing, there is no compulsion, there is no internal or external, there is no law. Is the germ zero, in which the entire universe is involved or preannounced. As such it is absolutely undefined and unlimited possibility, a possibility without limits. There is no a compulsion, not is a law. It is freedom without limits. "
Michael
I quite like your interpretation of what I said but it is not quite what I meant. let me shed more light on 'nothing':
Nothing is not empty space. Space itself is something and can never be always empty. Also, space has a past and although it may be empty now, that's not to say that it may have had 'something' in it in the past or in the future. Past, present and future mean time and time is something.
Nothing, therefore cannot exist in our universe because as soon as it does, it is no longer nothing but something in relation to something else.
Marek
The philosophical notion of nothing is a void where there is no physics, no mathematics, no chemistry , no biology, no laws of physics, no laws of nature, no mass, no particles, no interactions, no chemical elements, no reactions, no equations, no relations, no space, no dimensions, no time, no light, no gravity, no forces of nature and no life, absolute nothingness.
An empty set is not nothing because you are already associating mathematics with 'nothing', further you are associating some kind of an intelligent being' thinking mathematics' and that is certainly something. Also a mathematical set has a boundary and so it has dimensions and so need space to exist. All these things, boundary, dimension and space are certainly something rather than 'nothing'. The philosophical notion of 'nothing' is very abstract indeed--the more you think of it the more it become something!! In this context I would like to repeat here what Louis Brassard said in a separate thread about nothing: "Trying to define Nothing lead us towards a formidable Mind Trap field. " Indeed so!
I totally agree, @Issam, that space is not nothingness. We have electromagnetic fields, photons, and processes like vacuum polarization, where particles can be created spontaneously. According to the widely accepted understanding of space it is curved, and, therefore, cannot be nothing.
Potential candidates for voids could be singularities, realms (of nature or whatever?) that we cannot describe yet.
Now, what if we try to define the opposite of 'nothingness'? Can we gain some insight through working out an answer to this particular question? Are we lead into the same mind trap?
If "nothing" exists, then necessarily it must co-exist with something. In our space and in our time. Exactly like XIXth century's ether.
Michael
In order to define something it need to exist first. How can you define the opposite of something that does not exist? I suppose anything that exist is the opposite of nothing!!
As far as is known there is no such thing which is completely empty of all material things, even the quantum vacuum is filled with vibrations. If however this is a philosophical question then nothingness, much like the concept of disorder, is never empty. Everywhere we look we see "something" but people often say things like "there's nothing there", what they mean is that what they were looking for is not present so their perspective blocks them from seeing what is there.
Mystery, by TaoDeChing - Lao Tze
"Looked at but cannot be seen - it is beneath form;
Listened to but cannot be heard - it is beneath sound;
Held but cannot be touched - it is beneath feeling;
These depthless things evade definition,
And blend into a single mystery.
In its rising there is no light,
In its falling there is no darkness,
A continuous thread beyond description,
Lining what can not occur;
Its form formless,
Its image nothing,
Its name silence;
Follow it, it has no back,
Meet it, it has no face.
Attend the present to deal with the past;
Thus you grasp the continuity of the Way,
Which is its essence."
One way to define nothingness is to define it in a negative way: You first define what "thing" is then negate it. In our current understanding, "thing" is either a material object or a lump of radiation [The two mix and eventually become a new 'thing']. Now, according to quantum theory, if you remove all material objects from space, vacuum is left. But vacuum is different from nothingness as it teems with zero point energy of every conceivable radiation wavelength and it allows creation of pairs of particles [electron + positron, etc.] when stimulated. Basically, in the material sense, nothingness does not exist.
@Mohamed:
I like your definition, the one by negation. It's very logical, but only up to the point where you claim the non-existence of nothingness.
Apart form matter and energy there is an information. Nothingness, as a negation of everything existing, should then necessarily mean lack of information, too. Conclusion: there is no way to prove or disprove whether the nothingness exists. We will never know for sure.
Conjecture: To explore nothingness we would probably need to condition our mind to eliminate all distinctive thought processes that relate to matter, its movement (in space and time), transformations, boundaries, changes, etc. When the thoughts in our mind become "emptied" of all of our existing distinctions arising from all that we know of our material universe, perhaps, what we will encounter is the understanding of true nothingness..
Any definition of "nothingness" in the material world is therefore conjectured as only an undiscovered distinction and is not truly "nothing".
@Mohamed
There is a problem whenever you define nothingness! When you define nothingness by defining a thing and then negate it, it is already no longer nothing!! Once you define nothingness it becomes something. Nothing cannot be defined,'nothingness' is impossible! While I agree with your conclusion that nothingness does not exist, your argument is not consistent.
Nothingness does not exist and there is nothing to know about nothingness as it does not exist.
@Marek & @Isam
I think we should make a distinction between physical nothingness and conceptual nothingness. In my post, I dealt with physical nothingness by saying in our current understanding of the physical world, void or vacuum is not the same as non-existence because of zero-point energy, etc. The addition of information makes the topic more interesting. But in my opinion in so far as information is physical, (there-is-an-object-there type), it exists only where there is matter.
Isam's point seems to focus on the conceptual sense of the word. He seems saying that the idea of nothingness is in itself a of proof of existence of nothingness as an entity. My question is, does claiming that chimeras (non-existent beings) exist proof existence of chimeras?
Claims need to be substantiated. Non-substantiated claim is not science. Physical nothingness is a self contradictory term: physical(existing) and nothingness(non-existing)!
Void is the hollow of a tree, an empty stomach, what remains after a loss or a real gift you make. Nothingness, following Parmenide (I am writing from South of Italy) is nothing: it can't be, if you accept infinity
@Isam
These days science is about observable things. Things that cannot be observed (like nothingness) belong to metaphysics (a branch of philosophy).
I guess we need to also factor in the possibility of reality and thought being related and not distinct from each other and therefore if we need to realize nothingness in physical reality, we need to realize nothingness in thought first. We may call nothingness in reality as "physical nothingness" and the nothingness in thought as "conceptual nothingness", but both of these may not be distinct.
Nothing is not unique. Nothing needs qualification as to nothing in what? You may have zero number of some quantity, but not zero of every quantity. A complete zero in all observables is difficult to imagine and that big zero is a problem.
The Universe = `''ALL that exist''. Nothingess cannot belong to the universe as defined by the expression ''All that exist``. Since everything that exist is included in ''All that exist`` then nothingness, as the name indicated, does not exist.
I did not have time to go through the whole discussion, but I am afraid, that there may be some cultural misunderstanding here. In Indian and in Buddhist philisophy "void" and "nothingness" are very important notions. The question may be whether this typically Indian philosophical notion has anything to do with the "ether" "space" etc. notions of Western science? Again, we have to clarify the framework of discussion. I do not know, whether this notion has any significance in Muslim philosophy. According to my limited knowledge in the Greek pilhosophy it was not a central problem (although they dealt with "apeiron" and the atomists did talk about atoms and the space between them). In the Indian and in Buddhist thought (which influenced Chinese and Japanese thought as well, atlhough in a somewhat ditorted manner) nothingness is something "real" which is much discussed. I wonder how much of these aspects were touched in the previsou discussion.
Gyorgy,
The `'nothingness'' in ancient eastern philosophies is a notion related to a particular state of the Mind experience during meditative practices. The Greek apeirion is a comon eastern notion of the origin of the cosmos from an original chaos. The ''void'' was primarily a greek atomist invention necessary for atomic philosophy. Greek presocratic philosopher have created the notion of the world as a geometrical space -time. Most ancient culture did not conceive of time as similar geometrical dimension. Space time as conceived by the Greek is a direct consequence of the axiomatic geometry being developed by the pre-socatic greeks. The void or space objectively exist in geometry. Leibniz denied the absolute existence of the void or space and defined it as relative to point like center of forces. General relativity goes in the same direction.
Gyorgy,
I Hope this is relevant.
My interest has always been consciousness. I remember being stuck in my meditations and I only began to make progress again when I had a moment of insight (or so I thought). Previously I had been making the mistake of separating myself from the phenomena of my experiences. 'Sounds' were out there in the forest whether I was listening to them or not!! I remember the moment when I realized that 'sounds' where part of my phenomenal world - that 'sounds' are not the same thing as vibrations in the air.
All of a sudden I realised that I WAS my experiences and that there was no 'me' behind the scenes having the experiences. All of a sudden, the usual distinction between 'out there' and 'in here' became indistinct. I believe that this idea proved to be very useful and helped me focus my attention upon the more interesting issues.
Since then, however, my analysis has gone around a strange and wonderful circle to a point where, once again, I am forced to re-evaluate a basic assumption. The point I have arrived at - the Fractal Catalytic Model - suggests that consciousness correlates with a continuous macroscopic quantum coherent wave function - perhaps similar to a Bose-Einstein Condensate).
An analysis conducted by Prof. Ram Vimal and myself provided strong evidence that consciousness correlated with an underlying 'carrier wave' - a soliton of constant energy and a fixed Delta 't' between a 16th and an 18th of a second (depending upon the individual). Cognition (whether associated with body motion or the senses) are understood to correspond to variations of this basic solitonic wave form.
This model forces me to reconsider what I thought was a basic insight.
The model allows for a conscious state that is NOT ABOUT ANYTHING - an empty conscious state!! A step upon the road that leads you to this basic state of consciousness involves deconstructing the 'self':-
The Ghost and the Silver Fish
Imagine you are in an ocean - a vast unfathomable ocean.
You are not on the surface of this ocean,
but deep within its heart.
The surface of this ocean is so far above your head
that you cannot even imagine how far away it is.
The the bottom of this ocean is so far beneath your feet
that you cannot even imagine how far away it is.
And the darkness that you have been staring at for so long -
you do not know if it is the darkness of a thousand miles
or the darkness here - in front of your eyes.
And you have been here for so long
that you have forgotten yourself.
There is only the darkness
and the sound of distant storms.
Then, one day, out of the distance - a beautiful silver fish!
And then it was gone!
And it happened so quickly
that you did not have the time to remember yourself
so that you could really see the fish.
But now you do remember yourself.
There is the darkness.
There is the sound of distant storms.
And there is the waiting - for a silver fish
Thank you for the previous two notes. I did not want to change the main line of the discussion, I simply tried to add a further viewpoint.
I will extend the comment by Cameron and use Suppes "Axiomatic set theory" where he uses what he calls a standard definition of the empty set as:
Ø =x ⇔ (∀x)(y ∉ x)
This does not assert anything about any other variable besides x or y( say z). The point to be made is that we must define what the variables are and their inclusiveness. This leads to how we define the scope of the variables, and this is where much of the arguments I've seen in this post leads. We must restrict the discussion on whether we are talking about physical nothingness, philosophical arguments of nothingness,and define the scope within each of these categories to reach consensus.
My two cents
Nothingness is the thing that has exactly one property, namely, it has exactly one property.
Kerry,
Interesting definition. I agree with it. Nothingness is the minimal being whose only property is existence. So nothingness is undifferentiated existence. This is the neo-platonic definition of ''THE ONE'', the origin of all things.
Yes, I like that interpretation. For instance, one might say an empty Universe is one that is utterly undifferentiated: every location is absolutely indistinguishable from every other location.
Kerry,
An undifferentiate universe where only exist do have a single location by definition because any location is relative. It is why the question of the initial size of the universe does not make any sense.
Nothingness can be expressed as [a, a), meaning that something is there and is not there at the same time.
@Hermanta, that's something Ernst Bloch might have had described as "being not yet there'', when he described the fundamental experiences of human deficiencies as an expression of the potential opportunities of being.
Dear Michael,
Yes, indeed. I just tried to express that in symbols to mean 'being while not being there'.
Kerry, if nothingness is undifferentiated, then to become something is to differentiate.
Perhaps the problem is not that we need to mathematically describe nothingness, so much as we need to describe differentiation mathematically.
Arturo, perhaps you are working with a less than satisfactory definition of the empty set
[ ]=x, if and only if for all x, for all y, y is not an element of x
This definition takes away the specificity of Y Your definition was missing for all Y.
@Marco, why did you choose 1846? Of course, if the coming events cast their shadows before, that you were to born on a future date had the causes developed in terms of your forefathers also in 1846! So there was something!
But coming back to original question, nothing is not a mathematical term. Nothing could be attributed to zero of some measure. But this nothing is dynamic. You may have zero now, you will not have zero then. There is no empty container in this universe. It can be zero in some measure at time of your measurement.
Yes William, but can we design a term of zero destinction easier than we can define a term for nothingness? That is the question.
destinctions = 0
In the most ancients myth of creation, it is often he case where we have an original whole, undifferentiated called by various names and creation is expressed as a sequence of differentiation steps. Much later, when philosophical rational creation stories were created, some took that ancient scenario of creation from an undifferential whole but atomist philosophy proceeded differently by first positing the atoms and then the steps of their association. Modern cosmology proceeds by positing a theory in an eternal platonic realm with undifferentiated radiation energy in our realm, then differentiate this radiation energy in particles and then follow the atomistic association step scenario.
To me the empty set, is a logical construct of which there is no physical instance. It is just a formal way of saying there do not exist any instances which satisfy given conditions.
Lucero,
Indeed that is why I said earlier that [a, a) defines nothingness.
Sagar, If creation is impossible where did anything come from?
Without creation energy is impossible (Creation in this statement does not mean anything to do with god.) Nothingness is merely the base state from which creation first happened and does not need to exist beyond the Origin.
Is there a single example of creation out of nothing? Sculptors takes a piece of rocks and transform its external surface. There is an element of novelty in this sculpted form that may arouse pleasure for the viewer of the sculpture. This pleasure may be a sign that there is new information there. New information is always supported by an already existing support. We cannot imagine a initial state of the universe where there is no support for anything. How can such a state of total void in substance and in order could have changed and give rise to the current universe? I thus conclude that a total what exist today is a transformation of what exist before down to a state where there exists only ground of existence without any order except a tendency to create it.
Some of us can imagine an initial state where there is nothing to support the creation of anything yet something comes into being, field the precursor to energy and form
It may happen at the planck scale and be the cause of uncertainty
Yes you are wrong 0 does not equal 1, 0 implies 1 which is a slightly different equation.
0 -> 1=1
1=1
Integer math only works where there is SOMETHING to count, at the origin a different type of mathematics is needed. I show this by the implied sign.
Nothingness is the potential for everything to exist but it itself does not exist after the first instance of creation. Except as a boundary around everything that does exist.
Graeme,
''Some of us can imagine an initial state where there is nothing to support the creation of anything yet something comes into being, field the precursor to energy and form
It may happen at the planck scale and be the cause of uncertainty''
This require to imagine a transition from ''nothing'' to ''something'' and since there is initially ''nothing'', absolutely ''nothing'' explains this transition. Why not simply assumes the ''something'' in the first place since it is not explain anyway.
Louis: "This require to imagine a transition from "nothing" to "something" and since there is initially "nothing", absolutely "nothing" explains this transition. Why not simply assumes the "something" in the first place since it is not explain anyway."
The reason, is that we need to understand the structure of the Universe which is changed by how the "Something" comes into being. Assuming "Something" without any mechanism by which it is generated does not give us the mathematics to study the structure of the Universe at the Planck level. Assuming that small amounts of "something" are spontaneously generated, and that the simplicity of that something is enforced, gives us dark energy at the Planck level, and a reason for uncertainty, since there is no reason why the boundary between something and nothing has to be in any one particular place.
So yes some of us can imagine it, and there is a good reason, or what I think is a good reason for imagining it.
Graeme,
'' Assuming that small amounts of "something" are spontaneously generated''
Hypothesis 1:
''Initial Notthing'' -- (spontaneously generates) --> ``initial something'' ---(evolution) --> universe today
Hypothesis 2:
``initial something'' ---(evolution) --> universe today
The difference between Hypothesis 1 and hypothesis 2 is the addition of a step of a spontaneous creation out of nothing of the initial something, no explanation provided. It is not possible to provide an explanation since it is assumed that nothing exist and so no basis for any explanation.
Yes, louis, but hypothesis two is the greater stretch of the imagination for me, since it assumes that there is something without the intermediate step of nothing.
Not only that, but with hypothesis 1 you get ongoing genesis since once something has spontaneously generated it can continue to SG into the future. This flies against the more or less steady state hypothesis that most science is built on, but can explain uncertainty as well since there will be some uncertainty caused by the jostling as new fields come into existence within the matter that already exists.
The main requirement for SG is that it be limited to only very simple basic fields.
Graeme,
The world is an evolution and both hypothesis have to be conceive as ongoing genesis. I conceive the minimal ''Initial something'' as the Self-Generating Ground of Existence. So this initial something is not visible, nothing initially has stabilized into a visible structure. Any structures, any relational structure or law of nature are stabilized aspect of reality.
In physics it is almost impossible to do much without the conservation laws. Transition from nothing to something (however small) violates these laws. Furthermore, if you accept that nothing can transition into something (in the physical sense) then these laws are superflous.
Yes, of course Mohammed, this breaks the energy cannot be created law. It does not perhaps break the or destroyed law, that is an interpretation brought about by integer mathematics. But we were stuck with a large amount of unexplained energy in our more or less steady state universe theory anyway.
However if the rules for creating energy are as limiting as I suggest, perhaps it is a mute point. Besides it is not energy per se that is created it is dark energy which is another kettle of fish. We don't know the rules for dark energy yet.
Energy would be created by the opposition of fields creating force which translates into kinetic energy. The fields would already exist having been created at an earlier time, they would just have to come into opposition, and energy would be created.
It creates a very dynamic non-commutative geometry that lends itself to uncertainty.
Nothingless is simpe a world. Not all words have necessarly a referent "object" in real world. My kittle 9 years age baby said to me "Marco: since the nothing did not exist... why so many people are talking about something tha don't exist?".
My concerns regards science: we are devoted to study phenomenas and NOT the meaning of a word or an abstract symbol.
Anyway: creationism, in my opinion, is not a scientiphic issue but a tipycal paradoxical tale. Humans mind is very smarty in creating paradoxical frameworks. Sometimes are mind experiment (if they are in line with an evolutive argumentation BUT.... after 2500 years we have to stop with these useless specutative pastimes. Houch... do you know: the most symilar to nothingless things I've ever seen are just the specutation about the nothingless
In a Universe that has energy but nothing else, what is moving?
There has to be something that moves for energy to exist, yet in our more or less steady state theory of the big bang energy pre-exists everything that moves. Much better to allow energy to be created in a limited way than deal with a supply of energy that doesn't have anything to move.
Besides what we are discussing here is the philosophy at the base of science and mathematics.
With new philosophies might come new mathematics. With new mathematics might come new science.
Mohamed Musa,
At the beginning, where there is an ''initial something'' , there is not yet in this ''initial something'' something call the conservation of energy . All the physical laws will later evolve from the ''initial something''. So one has to include in this ''initial something'' enough so that all the current known laws of nature will emerge.
Alternately Louis, one has to accept that there is a phase change between the initial something and the rules that evolve into the physical laws. I suspect it is in regards to a saturation effect of some sort, that converts from non-commutative geometry into commutative geometry.
@Bill Johnson
>….Ex nihilo nihil fit - "Out of nothing, nothing comes."……Was the Universe born of Nothing? Perhaps not. Perhaps the opposite of the universe is not ‘nothing’ – but another state of ‘something’. Perhaps the‘Big Bang’ was an event that marked
a transition from a state of continuity and ‘unity’ (a ‘oneness’)
to a state of discontinuity and plurality!.....…..a transition from a state of continuity and ‘unity’ (a ‘oneness’…
Panagiotis this seems to be more hopeful than Aristotle's notion of matter being co-eternal with the Prime Mover. I find your speculation interesting, but it is unfortunately condemned to remain speculative since we cannot look backwards past the singularity. I see what you are saying with the notion of "traces", but traces ≠ "nihil". The existence of traces means there is no void, but rather that something (no matter how miniscule) exists within what was wrongly thought to be a void.
You make mention of the quintessence, but I am not sure what part it plays in what you are saying here. You seem to have moved from a discussion of "nothingness: to a discussion of things which, in Plato's system, must be grounded in the world of the forms or in the ideal. A "Divine Proportion" or a "Golden Ratio" is a beautiful notion which seems to ring true with our human aesthetic sense, but I do not know what it has to do with the state of the universe prior to the singularity, which is what I have in mind when I invoke the ancient maxim that "out of nothing nothing comes".
Cheers,
Bill
Panagiotis, Looking at your credentials I assume that the problem lies with me and my perception. You certainly have knowledge relative to this conversation that makes my own pale to insignificance. You will likely have to "connect the dots" in order for me to understand how these concepts relate to the notion of void or nothingness.
Bill
>…we cannot look backwards past the singularity….… I see what you are saying with the notion of "traces", but traces ≠ "nihil"… something (no matter how miniscule) exists within what was wrongly thought to be a void. … You make mention of the quintessence, but I am not sure what part it plays in what you are saying here…
Panagiotis,
Your last name would tend to make me think your Greek skills are trustworthy. I am trained in Biblical but not classical Greek. I believe that "diagraphon" (I can't get the Greek character to appear on Researchgate) is literally, as regards its etymology, "write through". I think it is used in some early church documents to mean something like "mark out" or "designate". I like the notion of God "painting". Is that its meaning by usage? Now how does all this relate back to the singularity?
Bill,,
NOT ..."diagraphon"..
I wrote : DIAZOGRAPHON [ διαζωγραφών ] .
Ref : Liddell @ Scott
διαζωγραφ-έω , paint in divers colours,Pl.Ti.55c, Plu.2.1003d,Ael.
Bill,
The idea of an initial singularity at the center of Big Bang cosmology is not the last word in terms of cosmology. It is a model that can predict a lot of what has happened in the last 14 billion years but it is not in itself a theory of origin for several reasons. A model may be valid to make predictions for the history of the universe but not valid for explaining the earliest period of formation of the universe. Take for instance the simple expression of the gravitational force of the earth: F = G M m / r¨^2 . This model has a built-in singularity at r=0 which does not exist within the range of applicability of the model which is only valid for r greater than the radius of the earth. The same with Big Bang theory, it has a buil-in singularity that does not exist. It does not exist because it is based on equations that cannot be valid when the energy density exceeded the range where quantum mechanic become incompatible with general relativity. It does not matter for the prediction of the model for time where the energy density is below a threshold making the model applicable for the late evolution of the universe but the model has no validity for the earliest period of the universe and so is not a model of the early evolution.
The model has several other problems: the fine tuning, necessity of background theoretical framework pre-existing without any universe, etc, etc.
- Badges
- Science method
- Similar topics
- Philosophy